by Beast
At first the newness of the night had been terrifying and fascinating, Wren’s pulse pounding as he slowly lost the scent of the wolves he’d known his entire life and instead picked up on new scents that before he’d only known from a distance: running water bubbling somewhere, a fox skulking through the brush, pine needles warm with feathers and down as birds made their nests and slept in them with little chirping whistles.
He wanted to experience it all, and hide from it all at once; he wanted to run, when he didn’t know what this strange wolf wanted from him, this man who was his new mate and yet said he didn’t want to mate him; this beast who fought with such brutality that he’d destroyed Connaught with the barest touch and yet handled Wren so gently; the only other wolf in this sudden pack of two, who had torn Wren’s world to pieces and left him confused and shattered and utterly adrift, with no idea what tomorrow would bring.
Ero Wake.
He didn’t make sense to Wren, and that was most frightening of all.
He couldn’t hide his fear, not from a wolf’s senses…but Ero at least let him have his dignity by not commenting on it, letting the silence stretch between them; for such a large man he moved with such lightness that his steps didn’t make a sound on the ground. He was so warm between Wren’s thighs, heat baking through his leathers, and Wren buried his face against the back of his shoulder and tried to ignore that he was wrapped around the thick breadth of a man’s bulk with rough leather scraping his bare inner thighs. He’d never been in such a compromising position with anyone but his mate.
I defeated the alpha. That would make him my mate.
He flushed, burrowing deeper into the scent of skin-warmed leather, and tried not to think about it. He didn’t know how he would feel, if he did.
How was Ero claiming him any different from being given to Connaught, really?
He hadn’t had a choice, either way.
It was with those thoughts riding his shoulders that he had drifted off, lulled by the steady rhythm of Ero’s gait. He slept without dreaming, losing himself in the dark…until a shift in Ero’s stride jostled him enough to pull him back toward consciousness. The scent and sound of water was much closer now—a bright and cheery trickle, the smell fresh and cool and a little muggy. The air was colder here, with a touch of wind that cut through his thin robes and chilled his skin.
Sleepily, he opened one eye—then stiffened as he realized he was still on Ero’s back, wrapped around him and clinging tight. Ero had stopped on the bank of a wide creek, in a tree-lined clearing at the base of a low slope. The pines and oak trees faded into trees the likes of which Wren had never seen—slender and curving things with twisted trunks that seemed to mimic the flow of bodies, as if limbs and delicate full-lipped faces blended in and out of the wood. Many of the trees twined their upper branches with each other, seeming to lean toward each other as if they would press their strange faces together in a kiss, but were forever denied. Some had even wound their trunks together, like two bodies twined together in mating, and Wren flushed hotly and looked away.
“So you’re awake?” Ero rumbled, turning his head until Wren caught one blue eye. “Will you be all right if I let you down?”
“Y-yes.”
“Brace yourself, then.”
Ero shifted to drop down to one knee, bringing Wren closer to the ground, then gently lowered his legs until Wren felt cool leaves and earth against the soles of his feet. He clutched at Ero’s shoulders, wobbling unsteadily, his inner thighs sore and aching, and as his legs tried to go out from beneath him he yelped and grabbed harder at Ero.
“Steady now,” Ero murmured, holding still and letting Wren cling to him. “You’re probably a bit stiff; you’ve been asleep for quite a few hours.”
The horizon was lightening, Wren realized; he couldn’t see much beyond the line of trees across the creek, but the sky overhead was grayish-blue, tinged with yellow far over the tops of the trees. Dawn. He was seeing his first dawn from outside the keep…and his breaths stilled as he looked up at the open sky, a strange sense of wonder filling him.
Until Ero gently drew away, leaving him to stand on his own, watching as the man hefted his bulk to his feet with powerful movements and unslung his pack and waterskins from his back. “You can bathe in the creek if you want to,” Ero said, sinking into a crouch and beginning to sweep dead leaves away from bare earth with both hands. “But don’t drink from it. The water’s still not safe where human cities were, but it’ll clear enough to drink once we get a few dozen more miles south.”
Wren bit his lip. “So the well at the keep wasn’t safe…? Didn’t it used to be a human city?”
“I’m sure it was fine as long as it was dug deep enough. Natural aquifers are usually deep enough to avoid contamination.” Ero pushed to his feet, body flexing almost sensuously, and scanned the tree line, blue eyes distant above his mask. “We’ll camp here for the day and move on with sunset. Are you hungry?”
Wren shook his head quickly. His stomach was in so many knots he didn’t think he could eat, but he didn’t know what to do, standing here helplessly. “I…is there anything I can do to help?”
Ero’s gaze shifted to him, and his mouth shifted behind his scarf in what Wren thought might be a smile. “Do you think you can gather firewood?”
Wren nodded. “I can do that.”
“Stay away from the naked branches here.” Ero gestured toward a few small fallen limbs that had been pushed to one side of the cleared circle of earth—the same pale, barkless wood as the strangely humanoid trees around them. “We don’t burn those. Look for pine with the bark still on.” He paused. “And stay where I can see you.”
Wren nodded again, backing away a few steps, then turning to pick his way up the short slope, brushing past the sparse stands of oddly intertwined trees. His body brushed one in passing, and a strange hum went through him, as if the tree had shocked him; he jerked back with a gasp, eyeing it warily, its serene face seeming to look back at him.
He circled and gave those trees a wide berth, as he bent to start picking up scattered and gnarled pine branches that had fallen from the trees along the slope.
As he worked, he watched Ero from the corner of his eye. Ero finished clearing a wide circle of earth, pulling up some loose grass, then piled a small bit of dead leaves in the center; when Wren brought back his first armload of branches, Ero took them with a terse nod and arranged them in a pyramid propped over the dead leaves, with several more larger twigs inside the pyramid and layered atop the leaves. Flint and steel came to hand from his pack, then, and he struck spark after spark until he was able to light a slender twig and hold its burning tip inside the pyramid until the dead leaves caught, the scent of scorching plant matter and smoke crackling on the air as they went up quickly, caught the twigs, burned through them with a hotter flame, then moved on to the branches, releasing the stinging scent of pine pitch with little crackling pops.
Ero did these things with a simple efficiency that seemed born of familiarity, while Wren felt as awkward as a child as he went back for another armload of branches; he was trying to think practically, think sensibly, or he’d start to panic. One armload of branches wouldn’t be enough to keep the fire going, or stave off the chilly day; he’d stock up enough to make sure the flames burned bright until sunset. If he made himself useful…
If he made himself useful, maybe this wolf wouldn’t abandon him out here to die.
While Wren gathered more and more wood, dirtying his robes with flaking bark, Ero unknotted the drawstring on his largest pack and dug out a pile of faded, ragged plaid blankets, tightly compacted into rolls and seeming to spring out from their compressed state into fluffy layers, including a padded thing with zippers covered in a shiny material that looked too thick and bulky to have rolled down to such a small bundle. Briskly Ero set up two sleeping places, one to either side of the fire—one with a few folded blankets layered into a pallet, the other piled with the fluffy padded thing that looke
d like…some kind of sleeping sack? as well as several more of those faded blankets.
Wren brought back his last armload of wood and piled it atop the stack to one side, then dusted himself off. “Is that enough?”
“It should be.” Ero settled down on the thinner pallet and nodded toward the thicker one. “Rest up if you’re tired. I’ll wake you when it’s time to move on.”
Wren blinked. “But…that’s the wrong bed.”
Ero looked amused. “How so?”
“It’s the big one.”
“It’s the soft one.” Ero sat cross-legged, leaning back on his hands. “I’m accustomed to sleeping on the hard ground. You’re not. We’re splitting our resources until we can get you your own bedroll, so take it for now.”
Wren didn’t understand. Was this alpha…showing him deference? But…that wasn’t…alphas took the best of everything first, then their mates, then the rest of the pack, but Ero seemed to think nothing of giving Wren the best sleeping place. But if this were Connaught…
Nothing came without a price, Wren thought, and he knew what Ero must want for this.
He bit his lip, then took a straggling step closer to Ero’s pallet; the wolf looked up at him with lazy curiosity, blue eyes half-lidded above the scarf over his mouth, and Wren tried to ignore the shaking of his heart as he dropped to his knees next to Ero’s pallet and reached for the belt buckled around the man’s hips with trembling finger.
Only for a firm—but not cruel—grip to snap around his wrist, arresting him in place and seizing his heart in a startled beat. He jerked his gaze up guiltily, meeting Ero’s eyes, fingers curling into a fist.
“Don’t,” Ero said softly, shaking his head, and gently pushed Wren’s hand away before releasing it. “You don’t have to do that.”
Wren curled his hand against his chest. Had he done something wrong already? “You…really don’t want anything from me?”
“No.” Said so calmly, yet without censure or judgment. “I don’t want a mate taken under duress. And I don’t intend to take one by force.” Pale blue eyes cut into him. “You don’t have to feel obligated to give yourself to me.”
Wren sat back on his heels. “But if I don’t, you won’t protect me.”
“Did I say that?”
Ero reached up to remove his hood, then—pulling it back to reveal an inky tumble of wild, tangled black hair streaked in silver, falling down to those broad shoulders and framing his face. He tugged his scarf down around his neck, revealing handsome features that looked like the stone statues Wren had once seen in a book back at the keep. The book hadn’t had a cover and he hadn’t known the name, but it had had photos inside and he had spelled out the letters beneath one white stone man with strange barbed wings and a beautifully tortured face, pensive and handsome and thoughtful: L-U-C-I-F-E-R. The pages had been ragged and stained, but he’d been able to make that out, read the letters every day to try to figure out how they sounded until his birth-father caught him with the book and took it away and he never saw it again.
Ero reminded him of that statue, cast in tanned flesh rather than white stone, the graceful and stubborn line of his jaw framed by a close-cropped black beard…and he was beautiful and wild and strange, with kind lines seamed around his eyes.
And he took Wren’s breath away.
Lifting one thick, brutish hand, Ero raked the fall of his hair back out of his face, further tangling and mussing it. “You’re my responsibility,” he continued. “I made the choice to drag you out here. I’ll protect you. You don’t have to do anything to earn that. The only thing you have to do is stay alive.”
Wren tore himself away from staring and looked down, curling his hands into fists in his lap. “I don’t know how to do that, out here.”
“Do you want to go back?” Ero asked softly. “I never asked you if you wanted to leave. If you want to go back, I’ll take you. I’ll make sure they take you back with no harm.”
“I…”
Did Wren want to go back?
Was there anything for him to go back to?
Even if the pack put itself back together, even if Connaught reclaimed his leadership and went on as if nothing had changed…did Wren want to go back to that, just because it was safe and familiar? Days of idle nothingness, barely even contributing to anything when Connaught had had notions about pampering him as the alpha’s mate; other omegas tended to the keep or cared for the pups or made things, but Connaught only expected Wren to remain sealed up in their chambers, practically imprisoned, only waiting for Connaught to return to rut into him as if he would get him with child and somehow, some way, make Wren look at him with the adoration the alpha had seemed desperate to force from him.
He’d always thought…
Always thought that was how it would be, until they grew to hate each other and eventually Wren was cast aside for a younger omega who might be more of what Connaught wanted—more obedient, more biddable, more enamored to be the alpha’s mate. Maybe Wren would mate again, but probably not, when no one wanted an alpha’s cast-offs. He would become a spinster, earning his keep by mending clothing or curing hides or some other small useful skill the men of the pack never wanted to bother with, and in some small way he’d been looking forward to that.
He still would have been part of the pack, part of the keep, but in some part it would have been freedom.
Yet in a single night, a single fight, Ero had changed that. Completely transformed any idea of what a future might look like, for Wren.
And while he feared the unknown outside his familiar walls, he would rather face that than return to an empty life dully waiting for Connaught to hold him down and pretend those frenetic, desperate thrusts were anything like love.
“…no,” he admitted. “I’ll stay with you. If…if you’ll teach me how to live.”
“I don’t know if I have anything to teach you.” Ero draped his arms across his knees, studying the fire; it flickered and created gold and orange highlights in his pale blue eyes. “But I’ll take you south with me, to the Silk Islands. You’ll at least be able to make your own way there.” Ero’s gaze shifted back to Wren, studying him thoughtfully. “You’ll be safe. It’s a good place to start if you want to choose your own life, instead of the one defined for you.”
Wren bit his tongue. It didn’t sound very safe to him, dropped alone in a strange place…but just because Ero had said Wren was his responsibility now didn’t mean he would want to keep that responsibility forever. “What are the Silk Islands?”
Ero’s lips creased subtly, not quite a smile. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Tell me?” Wren asked softly. “Tell me like a story to put me to sleep. So I won’t be afraid outside.”
Ero’s quiet, patient expression never shifted. “Have you ever slept outside under the sky before, Wren?”
“No. Never.”
“Then for today…” Ero lifted his chin toward the other pallet. “Watch the sky. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about the Silk Islands.”
Wren nodded, withdrawing to the other side of the fire, until it was a barrier between them, a crackling wall of flame and the good, safe smells of burning wood. “Okay,” he said, and settled on top of the pallet to brush his dirty feet off before he prodded at the zippered side.
It was a sheath, he realized, and the outer layer was waterproof while the inside was soft and insulated, even more so with the layered blankets both on top and below it. Tentatively he slipped his body inside…then let out a low sound of pleasure and burrowed deeper, snuggling down up to his shoulders with only the top of his head peeking out. The layered bedding against the yielding earth was better than any furs on hard stone, and the fire seemed to soak its heat into the material until the inside of the sheath was as warm as an embrace.
He watched Ero past the edge of the sleeping sack, curling his fingers against the seam where the soft inner material met the reflective outer material; the man held entirely still, and didn’t
look as if he’d be sleeping any time soon. After several long, silent minutes of staring at the crackling fire, Ero unscrewed one of the water skins and took a drink, then shifted to lie down on his thinner pile of blankets, draping one over his hips and pillowing his head on one thickly muscled arm.
Wren bit his lip, then ventured, “You’re not what I expected.”
Ero had started to close his eyes—but now he stopped, looking at Wren through the faint haze of sparks rising between them. “What did you expect?”
“A monster,” he admitted.
For several minutes, Ero said nothing, and Wren shrank down deeper into the sleeping sack. Had he offended him? Or was he just…saying silly things that made no sense?
But finally, “I am a monster,” Ero rumbled, an edge of something pensive and dark in his voice. “But I’ve never forgotten that I’m a man, too.”
Then he shifted onto his other side, leathers and skin hissing against blankets as he gave Wren his back. Wren watched him for several lingering moments, then turned onto his back and looked up at the sky, turning pink and bloody and lush and soft with dawn. He’d never seen it this way before, with no walls anywhere in sight, and there was something about it that made him sad; that felt strange and lonely, this endless thing marching on forever, untouchable no matter how much it might want to reach down and just…
Touch.
And all around the strange trees with their living faces shifted and sighed, and Wren caught a breath as he heard their branches rub together, and in those strange sounds were words, low and dreaming.
He lives, the trees said, and Wren shivered and closed his eyes and told himself to sleep. The touched one still lives.
CHAPTER THREE
Ero didn’t sleep that day.
Instead he only watched his newly acquired charge as the little omega thrashed restlessly inside the old nylon sleeping bag, every once in a while letting out low, distressed moans before subsiding with a sigh, rosebud lips parted and the pink tip of his tongue peeking past, a few strands of hair working past their binding to drift across his face.